If Sunday’s parliamentary elections were conducted throughout Georgia as they were in the 45th voting district of Batumi, it would difficult to call them fair.
Michael Ochs, an observer from the Warsaw-based Office of Human Rights and Free Elections of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, told Zycie the day before the elections that they would be fairer than those held in some other post-soviet republics. “At least here there is an election campaign,” he added.
In fact, there was. Program One of State Television was totally dominated by President Eduard Szevardnadze and his Association of Georgian Citizens - the Chairman of the opposition Republican Party, Ivljan Khaindrava, told Zycie. The opposition is convinced that countless television election ads and large billboards of the president’s association must have cost significantly more than allowed by campaign regulations.
In Batumi on the Black Sea, the capital of the Adzhar Autonomous Republic, Zycie’s correspondent did not see a single portrait of the president, whose likeness towers over the streets of Tbilisi. In Adzhar, the top dog is the speaker of the parliament, Aslan Abaszydze, who has ruled the small republic on the Turkish border with a strong hand for the last eight years, and now has his eyes on Tbilisi. Presidential elections will be held in Georgia next year, this year’s parliamentary elections are merely a prelude to a showdown between the forces of Mr. Szevardnadze and Mr. Abaszydze.
According to initial forecasts, these elections were won by the president, whose party obtained almost half of the votes. The “Renewal of Georgia” Block, in which the main player is the party of the Adzharian ruler (bearing the same name), had to be satisfied with less than 30%. Therefore, one fifth, maybe one fourth of the votes went to the remaining 31 political groupings. And this not so bad considering the course of the campaign. But will this be enough to enter parliament in light of the fact that the threshold was raised from 5% to7% this year?
I was an International Observer
Zycie’s correspondent had a front row seat in Georgia as
an international election observer, sent by the Warsaw-based Institute
for Democracy in Eastern Europe (IDEE). “Keep your eyes and ears wide open,”
was one of the instructions of the foundation’s director, Malgorzata Naimska.
“There will be a lot of cheating,” she explained.
“Particularly in Adzhar,” added our local guardian angel, Fridon Sakvarelidze, after we arrived in Tbilisi. Neither Petruszka Szustrova, a Czech journalist, who encouraged me to go on this trip, nor myself took much stock in this. What we witnessed, however, exceeded our wildest expectations.
“The ideal observer,” one of the Republican Party candidates told
us in Batumi, “is one who sits in the polling station from beginning to
end.” I can’t say that I was thrilled at this prospect. In the end we had
to admit that he had a point.
In Batumi we would have gotten lost if not for Alik (Aleksandr Czchikvadze)
and his Ziguli. The previous night’s downpour flooded the roads, but Alik
knew the area and detours well, thus we proceeded without incident. When
we arrived to polling station 45 the doors were still locked.
It started out slow; regulations, sealing the ballot boxes (they were empty), etc. At 7AM the first voter arrived. Petruszka duly noted the first vote cast. And then, nothing. Finally the second, third… Alik took me on a short trip around Adzhar’s polling stations, but there was noting out of the ordinary “in the district.” No problems. None. “It has never been so orderly,” both a communist and republican assured me in one of the polling stations of the Khelvaczauri district.
We return after 12. The polling station is crowded, people are pushing each other to get their ballots, standing in lines for the voting booths and crowding around the ballot boxes.
Petruszka is furious, I have never seen her so upset. Initially, she had sat some distance away and counted the voters. However, when the crowd blocked her view of the ballot box she moved closer, next to it, and saw someone throw a thick stack of ballots into the box.
She hardly finishes telling me this when we witness the next irregularity. I move over to the ballot box and literally after one minute we manage to prevent another similar attempt. At that moment, the commission chairman appeared and grabbed the stack of ballots we had managed to save out of Petruszka’s hand.
Suddenly I understand why in Austrian elections the opening to the ballot box is always covered with something and is only uncovered by a commission member when a voter wants to cast his ballot. If the voter was holding more than one ballot, the opening would be immediately closed.
After 2, a mobile ballot box is ready to make its rounds among those
who are too ill to come to the polling station. The chairman holds up 35
election ballots and asks if someone wants to accompany the “ballot box
on wheels.” We refuse believing that no one would be able to 35 ballots
and make them multiply in such a way that no one would notice. That was
our mistake.
He who comes late…
At 5 in the afternoon, 3 hours before the voting ends, the 45th polling station in Batumi ran out of single-mandate majority ballots. An hour later, there were no more “proportional” ballots. The voting was over. Over a dozen people left with the same registration slip with which they arrived.
Petruszka had recorded the following numbers: 1470 voters voted both “majority” and “proportionally,” an additional 98 only “proportionally.” Remembering about the 35 ill voters and the extra ballots thrown into the box before out very eyes, as well as taking into account the possibility that we missed a few voters in out count, we expect that the number of counted ballots will be higher than our figure by about 150.
Miracle
Imagine our surprise when the commission announced that the elections
had proceeded normally and that… 2582 voters had cast a ballot. It is difficult
to make out what this means exactly as there were almost 200 fewer ballots
cast. Moreover, we did not observe that large a number of people leaving
without casting a vote when the station ran out of the last “proportional”
ballots.
The vote counting was only a formality, and a tiring one. The commission
began with the “majority” ballots. The results: an absolute victory for
the candidate of Aslan Abaszydze’s party: 1748 of the 2280 “cast” votes.
It is the latter number which is the important one: it is exactly the number
of ballots that the polling commission received from the district.
Therefore, later, when a “majority” ballot was found during the
counting of the “proportional” ballots - we couldn’t help ourselves and
burst out laughing. We were the only ones laughing. Yet perfectly aware
that we were witnesses to a pathetic farce.